The present invention relates to snack products and more particularly to chip-type snack products.
The food products which are sold in the general category of snack items are many and varied, typically including such things as chips (e.g., potato chips and corn chips), puffs (e.g., corn puffs), etc. Snack iems account for a large volume in the food industry. Generally, snack items are eaten apart from a regular meal and often different snack items are served at the same time. When snacks are served, normally at least one chip-type snack is included. One of the most popular chip-type snacks is the potato chip or fabricated potato chip.
The present invention relates to new method and apparatus for preparing fabricated, shaped chip-type snacks. The present invention will be described primarily with regard to preparation of potato chips; however, it should be recognized that various other types of fabricated chips (such as corn chips or wheat chips) may be prepared using the present invention.
It has been known in the past to prepare chip-type snacks by preparing a dough sheet and cutting individual sections from the dough sheet. The sections are then fried to form chips. A major difficulty has been confronted in controlling the movement of the individual sections through the deep fat fryer. A partial solution has been provided by operating a continuous belt in the upper portion of the fryer which assists in moving the sections through the fryer. Some sections, however, may clump together resulting in unfried or only partially fried chips. Other sections may remain in the fryer too long and become overly fried or burned. The present invention overcomes such problems by moving a continuous ribbon of chips positively through a frying system and then separating the ribbon into individual chips by fracturing the ribbon between chips.